The Best Of The Best Of Let It Be

One of the decisions I made when starting this blogging odyssey (blogdyssey?!?) was to limit myself to official recordings release during the Beatles lifetime. That way I might have some chance of retaining my sanity, finishing during my natural lifetime and avoiding wading through a sea of substandard bootlegs and outtakes. But which version of Let It Be is the best? The Spectorised version which abandoned the original concept and which Paul so despised he cited it in his 1970 court case? Or the stripped down reissue - 'Naked' as God (or at least Paul) intended? You would expect the latter album to be simply be remixes, but many tracks are completely different versions. After a detailed survey (click on the titles for more info) here is my ideal Let It Be mix tape.


LIBN Two Of Us
LIBN Dig A Pony
LIB   Across The Universe               
LIBN I Me Mine
LIB   Dig It     
LIBN Let It Be                   (see also The Many Guitar Solos Of Let It Be)
LIB   Maggie Mae           
LIBN I've Got A Feeling     
LIBN Don't Let Me Down     
A1    The One After 909         
LIBN The Long And Winding Road 
A3    For You Blue                         
LIB   Get Back                  (see also Get Back To The Drawing Board)


LIBN wins hands down though LIB has two superior versions (not counting Dig It and Maggie Mae which don't appear on LIBN at all) and the Anthologies manage a couple. But a word of warning. LIBN wasn't a restoration job on a masterpiece obscured by years of neglect and audio grime. It merely made a bad album slightly nicer to listen too. Some of that grime was there for a reason. A pristine digital mix displays substandard writing and poor performances that you can't pin on Phil Spector. The album remains, as John Lennon famously said

the s**tiest load of badly recorded s**t
with a lousy feeling to it

Abbreviations

LIB – Let It Be
LIBN – Let It Be Naked
A1 – Anthology 1
A3 – Anthology 3

Under The Influence: Lindsey Buckingham (Fleetwood Mac)

When you think about the Beatles, it’s usually about the sophisticated way they used pop elements and whatever they were being turned on to by George Martin to do things that hadn’t been done before. [I Saw Her Standing There] is just a standard three chord song, but it’s a rock and roll classic. It still explodes at you when you hear it today. There’s even a terrific live version on [Anthology 1] that made me go, “My God, these guys could really play." It represents in its earliest and most naïve incarnation all the buoyancy the Beatles had to offer. 

Lindsey Buckingham Lava Magazine 

The Best Of Let It Be (pt.2) - One After 909

One After 909 occupies a pretty unique place in rock history.

It was a song that was recorded just after their first album (during the From Me To You sessions) but appeared on their final release (Let It Be) instead – a full 7 years later. The first version was released (on Anthology 1) about 20 years after the second, meaning in almost everyone's perception the 'cover version' is the original. I can't think of another song by any band that has the same convoluted history.

LIB – A raucous version from the famous rooftop concert featuring Billy Preston. The band swing the rhythm, McCartney plays a root/fifth bass line pretty much throughout. The lead guitar (Harrison) is panned right. The track ends with applause from the handful of people on the roof and Lennon sings a line of Danny Boy. There are no Spector overdubs.

LIBN – A light remix of the LIB version. Very slightly louder overall, drums louder but Harrison's guitar is panned more center making it harder to distinguish between the guitars. The track fades quickly in order to cut the applause and Lennon's comment. McCartney's BVs are lower but Lennon's off mic “ad libs” are much louder.

A1 - A composite of takes 4 and 5 recorded on 5 March 1963. The song is played in straight time, the intro is F# E B instead of B, Lennon is playing acoustic. McCartney plays constant 8th notes on bass (or tries to! - see below). Ringo adds 8th notes on the bass drum in the 'move over once' breaks.

A1 - A composite of outtakes. Take 3 breaks down when McCartney is unable to keep up playing fingerstyle. An argument ensues about suitcase between John, Ringo & Neil Aspinall. Take 4 breaks down when Lennon comes back in 4 bars early after the solo. More arguing. Take 5 is the solo till the end (but fades out early).

There's hardly anything to pick between LIB & LIBN but LIB just edges it because the lead guitar is clearer and it doesn't have that awkward fade on the end. The outtakes on A1 are hilarious and well worth a listen. The complete version on A1 is the best in my opinion, even though it clearly has more in common with I Saw Her Standing There than Get Back. The take has an energy that LIB never achieves and though the playing is equally as ropey, it's because they're inexperienced youths rather than jaded rock stars playing in sub zero winds.

Best version: Anthology 1

abbreviations

LIB - Let It Be
LIBN - Let It Be Naked
A1 - Anthology 1

Thanks to The Beatles Bible for background info

Please Please Me (Song)

The 3rd song recorded for Parlophone is the first that shows signs of true genius. The playing (especially Bass & Drums) is brilliantly tight. The song is a model of both economy and ‘hooky’ writing.

Intro. The first hook is the opening lead guitar/harmonica melody. This is essentially a slightly adapted version of the first half of the verse melody. What that means is that when you hear the verse for the first time you feel you’ve already heard it before. Genius!

Note also the economy of doing this with just the first half of the tune. Why take up 14 whole seconds when 7 will do?

Next the verse restates the melody and you might say develops it (4 bars now instead of 2 bar). But McCartney adds a static harmony (remaining on the high E) as Lennon descends the scale from E to G#. This use of oblique motion gives a memorable ‘chiming’ effect to the tune. Bars 4 and 8 of the verse have no vocals, but what could be a dead bar at the end of each phrase is filled with two very distinctive guitar fills. First off-beat chords G(bIII) A(IV) B(V) – doubled by Harrison for extra effect, and then a single note root, octave, fifth fill, this time emphasised by the drums dropping out.

The Pre Chorus again feels incredible hooky due to the call and response vocals “Come On”, the ascending B.V. harmony and the accented ‘pushes’ causes a build in tension which brilliantly reflects the lyrical theme of romantic (sexual) frustration and releases into the ‘chorus’ (if you can call something a little over two bars long a chorus). To my ears the third chord vi (C#m) is unexpected too.

More economy in the turnaround (a recap of the intro). Heading back into the verse they play it once. Going to bridge we only get half. This means that every single time you hear that intro hook it’s different. The outro is the same length as the intro but has vocals over the top.

The bridge is a perfect contrast to the verse. The busy eighth notes of the melody against the verse’s strident quarter notes, the repetitive semitone movement against the almost whole octave descent and the solo voice as opposed to the pealing harmony. The end of the bridge however bears more than a passing resemblance to both the beginning of the verse and the end of the chorus adding yet another layer of familiarity.

Finally the outro is a mash up of the intro and the end of the chorus, and just as you begin to expect a fade out there is a blistering set of non diatonic chords I(E) bIII(G) bVI(C) V(B) I(E), a hint of the first verse fill, and it’s all over in 2:03. The first sound after the final chord died away was producer George Martin saying, “You’ve just made your first number one.” He was right. It truly is a thing of beauty.

Tickets To Write

What can we take away from it? Well, just listening to a classic like this over and over again can’t do a songwriter any harm.

But main things are

T2 Brevity – try cutting away all the excess. Do you need to play that riff four times? How about twice? Or once? Or half?

T3 make everything a hook. Even a one bar guitar fill.

T4 Try to create intros/outros/solos from existing parts of the song. This will greatly increase the stickiness of your song. The Beatles were masters of this (See Help for example). Nirvana did it too - on the solo of Smells Like Teen Spirit.

T5 Have a bridge that contrasts with the other musical sections fast/slow, wide/narrow range etc.

Any shortcomings? Yes -the lyrics are clumsy and trite. Lennon is feeling blue yet again (there’s always rain in his life). But unoriginal as they are the music matches the mood so perfectly that it covers a multitude of lyrical sins.

Anthology 1 contains an early alternative version of Please Please Me